Looks like I will have to stop now and get to work. There is so much to do here. War gets into every corner.
With love, wherever you are,
Your Frank
STRASBOURG, ALSACE-LORRAINE
Frank had never seen so many wounded. Most of the patients suffered severe injuries, compounded by mud, the cold, and infection. Some were too far gone when they arrived. This week alone, he’d had two patients die on the operating table. The only upside was that after three days at the battalion aid station, he and Lartz and Anderson had been called back to the Strasbourg hospital to perform surgeries.
Helen’s letters had finally caught up with him—nine in one day, with a January 5 and a February 1 letter in the same batch. He’d arranged to meet Bradford for supper, but no way could he leave his cot until he finished reading. He smiled at a letter that began with Helen’s hearty congratulations on his new rank of captain. Frank hadn’t mentioned it—except to write Capt. Frank R. Daley on his V-mail. It had been all his clever wife needed. He had to admit he liked the new rank. And although Bradford refused to confirm it, Frank suspected he’d played a part in the promotion.
Helen could make him laugh out loud, as with the limerick she sent from the Stars and Stripes:
I once had a girl—her name was Nellie.
She fell in the ocean—right up to her . . .
Knees.*
*The poet apologizes for the fact that this poem does not rhyme because the water wasn’t deep enough.
Frank knew how strong his wife was, but he still worried about her. In one letter, she fed his spirit as if she could read his mind:
Naomi says I must stop this fruitless, but draining, activity called worry because worrying is a bit like telling God He can’t handle things. Mom used to say that worry is always borrowed, usually from a future that won’t even happen. I never thought of myself as a worrier, but I do worry about you, and I worry about Eugene, and I worry about everyone. More and more, I get the feeling that I have control over less and less. Do you know what I mean?
Frank read the news of her brothers as if they were his own. Eugene was home. Safe. Helen had no details, but between the lines, he suspected her brother had been discharged, possibly for shell shock.
In no letter, however, was there mention of Paris or Colonel Pugh. Frank tried not to let his imagination run wild.
Bradford had finished eating by the time Frank got there. “Sorry I’m late.”
“No problem, mate. I saw you leave the post with a handful of letters and surmised I should go ahead and dine without you.”
Frank downed his dinner as fast as he could without making himself sick. He had a favor he wanted to ask, but he was waiting for the right time. They chatted about patients and other doctors.
“How is your friend, Lieutenant Lartz?” Bradford asked.
Now or never. “Major, I wonder if I could ask you for a favor. I don’t even know if it’s something you could do.”
“I am intrigued. In our brief acquaintance, I’ve not taken you as a favor-asking man. Ask away.”
“It’s not for me. It’s for Lartz. Only I’m not going to say anything to him in case nothing comes of it. Lartz is tearing himself up over his mother and his brother.” Frank filled Bradford in on what he knew about Lartz’s family. “If you could do anything to help find them, to let Lartz know where they are . . . Well, that’s the favor. And I know it’s a big one.”
Bradford didn’t speak for a long minute. Frank could almost hear the wheels spinning. “I’d be happy to give it a go for your friend.”
Frank felt some of the weight lift off his shoulders. “Thanks so much, Major.”
“Don’t look now,” Major Bradford said, “but I think it’s stopped raining. Care for a stroll?”
Two days of rain had erased every trace of snow. Now, as they took the high road, the air smelled clean, cleansed. Both moon and sun were visible at polar ends of a gray sky. Bradford was the first to speak. “How are you and Helen? It’s been a while since you’ve seen her, I take it.”
“I miss my wife as if she were a physical part of me that’s been poorly amputated.”
“I understand. I miss my wife and boys in much the same fashion.”
“Once I return to the battalion aid unit, who knows when I can get a leave? I need to see my wife, Major. I’m not above going AWOL.”
“I see.” Bradford kept eyes front, his face betraying no emotion. Frank was already second-guessing himself for confiding to his commanding officer that he’d go AWOL if necessary. Bradford had become a good friend, but he was a lifer in the military. He played by the rules. Frank should have kept his mouth shut because he was going to see Helen, even if the entire British and American military tried to stop him.
“Let me think on this, will you?” Bradford said. “I believe I’ll have a little talk with our friend Fritz.”
Fritz, one of the German prisoners, had made himself indispensable. Frank didn’t know the man’s real name or how he’d been captured or even how he’d won the trust of the whole camp, but the German POW had more freedom than the American and British soldiers. Fritz was one of the drivers who carted around officers, delivered food, and repaired weapons. He carried the mail to and from the main post office in Strasbourg and manned the post office in camp. That made him the number one person Frank wanted to see every day.
Three days later, rendezvous plans were set. Bradford had come through with a three-day leave for Marseille. Frank had written a coded letter to Helen and a fairly cryptic letter to his Marseille friends. Fritz promised the letters would be delivered on time, but Frank stopped by the post office to double-check.
“Ja. I mailed your letters to your sweetheart,” Fritz said.
“She’s not just my sweetheart. She’s my wife.”
For the first time, Fritz looked directly into Frank’s face. The man had big bones, no fat, and outweighed Frank by forty pounds. Fritz’s eyes, normally the size of shooter marbles, had shrunk to peewees or slags. It was unnerving to be stared at by someone who may have killed Allied soldiers. “A good wife is hard to find and to keep, ja?”
Frank had never thought of it in that way. Helen would always be his. And yet, she hadn’t written him about Paris. Or Pugh. Finally, he answered Fritz’s question. “Ja.”
All was going according to plan. In less than twenty-four hours, Frank and his wife would be in the barn paradise. He hated making her travel so far, but she could take a direct train, and he wanted her to meet his Marseille family. He stuffed a few essentials—including the four candy bars he’d been saving—into his pack and waited inside the tent for Fritz. When Frank had admitted how bad he was with directions, Bradford had arranged for Fritz to drive him all the way to Marseille and back. Anderson and Lartz would cover for him while he was gone, but he’d have to be back by Wednesday night.
“Are you sure you can trust Fritz?” Andy asked. He was stretched on his cot, reading a girlie magazine he’d “confiscated” in town.
“Of course.” Frank did feel a bit uneasy about traveling with Fritz. But the guy would be saving him about five hours over public transportation, hours he could spend with Helen. German or not, Fritz was his new hero.
“He can trust Fritz,” Lartz said. “That guy’s been in camp over a year and has the trust of all the higher-ups. They let him drive to Paris to pick up ammo.”
“Besides,” Frank added, “he’s the best driver in Alsace-Lorraine. And his English is better than Andy’s.”
“Hey!” Andy complained.
“His sense of humor is better than Andy’s too,” Lartz added.
“So what’s not to trust, right?” Still, a feeling of unease threatened to bring him down.
A jeep pulled up outside and honked.
“Too late to back out now,” Anderson muttered, not glancing up from his magazine. “Nice knowing you, Daley.”
Frank left the relative warmth of the tent and stepped into the windy, cold nig
ht. The jeep was running, and Fritz sat behind the wheel, a wool cap pulled over his ears. Frank tossed his duffel in the back and started to hop in front.
“Sorry. Supplies and map. And mess. Ride in back, please?” Fritz said.
Some officers preferred riding in back, but Frank liked the front because he got less carsick, something he wasn’t about to admit to Fritz. Anyway, he didn’t want to start their trip with Fritz assuming leadership. “Feels too much like you’re a chauffeur.” He reached for the door latch.
Fritz revved the engine. “I am chauffeur.” He put his hand flat on the opened map. He wasn’t kidding about the mess. An extra gas tank sat on the floor, with an assortment of tools. “I deliver supplies for Major Bradford in Marseille.” He motioned to a box that filled the seat under the map. “No room.”
“Okay, Fritz. You win. But you’re a driver, not a chauffeur.” He hoped Fritz wouldn’t ask him to define the difference because he wasn’t sure he could. He climbed in and pulled down the seat, which put him head and shoulders above his driver. Up that high, the wind would be murder.
The jeep jerked its way out of town, bouncing on cobblestones. Frank felt the familiar wave of nausea before they’d left the city. At least he’d known enough to skip supper and carry rations in his pack for when his stomach settled. He kept swallowing and making himself focus on the road, tricks that had helped him in the past.
In no time, they were climbing the rugged terrain above Strasbourg. The jeep took a sharp turn onto a dirt road Frank hadn’t known existed, although he’d been down the main road several times to the marketplace.
“Really appreciate this.” Frank leaned forward to be heard over the rumble of the tires on an increasingly bumpy road. It had to be a shortcut. He was glad not to be driving. He never would have found this road in a million years. Plus, there were no guardrails. He didn’t know what would happen if they met another jeep.
“I like to drive,” Fritz said.
“I hope I don’t get you in trouble, Fritz. Have you thought about what you’d say if you’re stopped on the way back?”
“I say hello. Can they arrest me? I am a prisoner already. And chauffeur.”
“Still, you didn’t have to do this. The major told me he gave you the option because of the risk.”
“You are the one taking a risk, ja? And I believe you consider your wife worth this risk?”
“She’s worth every risk.” He wasn’t sure what risk Fritz was referring to, though. This time, he had an official leave.
“Please to tell me how you met her?”
Once Frank started talking about Helen, he couldn’t stop. Fritz listened, but Frank knew he was mainly talking to himself.
They’d been on the road a while when Frank caught a glimpse of a sign. He hadn’t been paying attention, and he didn’t get a good look, but it hadn’t looked like French, or English. “What did that sign say?”
“What sign?”
“I think it was the name of a village, but it wasn’t in French. I think it was in German.”
“Alsace-Lorraine, both German and French.” This was true enough. Most of the signs in the city were in French and German, some in English, too.
“But we should be out of the province by now, shouldn’t we? All France now, right?” And most of the liberated French towns had torn down everything German that reminded them of the occupation.
Fritz didn’t respond.
Frank may have had the worst sense of direction in Missouri, and the language skills of a post, but something felt wrong. He squinted into the cold, silent night. A fingernail moon didn’t help.
“Wait a minute.” A river ran alongside the road, about a football field down a valley, through thick woods. Frank hadn’t noticed it before because his thoughts had been on Helen, but this was no little river, no stream. “What river is that?” It had to be the Rhine. Too big for anything else. Only it shouldn’t have been there, not if they’d been traveling west and south, like they should have been. The Rhine runs left. That’s how Lartz had tried to help him with directions around Strasbourg. He made up sayings like that so Frank wouldn’t get lost. The Rhine runs left leaving town. Even if they were still in the province, the river should have been on their left.
“Fritz?” Frank leaned forward, craning his neck to see his driver’s face. “We’re going the wrong way, buddy.”
“Do not worry.”
“Don’t worry? What’s that mean? I want to know exactly where we are!” Frank reached over the seat for the map, but Fritz covered it with his hand.
“We will be in Marseille before your wife arrives. I give you my word.”
“That’s not what I asked. Fritz, are we in Germany?”
Silence.
“Fritz! Turn this jeep around now!”
But he didn’t.
“Stop! Halt!” His nausea had turned into a knot. If he’d been diagnosing himself, he would have called it an ulcer. “I have my revolver. Stop the jeep!”
Fritz still didn’t answer. The jeep continued at the same pace, in the same direction. Frank drew his weapon and pointed it at Fritz’s head. But now what? What was he supposed to do? He couldn’t shoot Fritz. And even if he could, then what? The car would spin out of control, careen down the valley into the Rhine. And if he survived, he was the enemy here, not Fritz.
He was the prisoner of war.
Frank felt the dark forest closing in on their jeep as Fritz killed the headlights and drove them deeper into enemy territory. The man maintained his silence. No matter what threats Frank threw at him, they fell like confetti. There was nothing for him to do but holster his weapon and let himself be hauled deeper inside Germany. He hadn’t a clue where they were, but his imagination took him to terrible places.
Just when Frank didn’t think the road could get worse, Fritz swerved onto a path with barely room for one vehicle. It occurred to Frank that they hadn’t passed a single car coming or going. They bounced as the path grew rockier. Frank had to hold on to keep from being thrown out of the jeep. On the other hand, would he stand a better chance out of the jeep? On foot? Without a hint of how to get back?
The jeep slowed, and Fritz turned in at a solitary stone cottage, vine covered, with a thatched roof. Frank felt like Hansel without Gretel.
Fritz killed the engine, pocketed the key, then turned to Frank with a face that revealed nothing. “Ten minutes. All will be well. Please.”
Frank gripped the gun so tightly it might have gone off by accident. He wanted to ask a million questions—Where were they? Why were they? Was Fritz escaping? Taking him hostage? Only before he could get out a word, his captor hopped out of the jeep and strode to the back of the cottage and out of sight.
Frank checked his watch, his hand never leaving his gun. What if he never saw Helen again? He pictured her at the train station, looking around for him. He could try to escape. But on foot? There was no key in the ignition, and he’d never learned how to hot-wire a car. Frank rued the day he’d refused to let Jack teach him.
In the valley of death, I fear no evil because You’re with me. The words weren’t exactly right, but he said them over and over in his head.
Fritz had been gone five minutes. Seven. Nine. If Frank planned to make his move, he needed to make it now. He could at least investigate. He was climbing out of the jeep when Fritz emerged from the bushes next to the cottage. He jogged to the jeep and got in. “Thank you,” he said, as if he’d made an innocent stop and only regretted wasting Frank’s time.
Frank looked at the dimly lit cottage. A curtain was drawn back, allowing a strip of light to fall on the unruly yard. The face of a brown-haired woman appeared in the window, her eyes huge, sad. Frank settled back in his seat.
Fritz started the jeep and headed back the way they’d come. He drove carefully, but in complete silence. Frank was fairly certain he was taking the rocky path in reverse.
“Fritz, are you a spy?”
Fritz’s laugh was devoid of humor. �
��I am not spy.”
When Frank finally spotted the Rhine, he was sure Fritz was headed back to Strasbourg. They crossed a different bridge into the region, and no one stopped them. He’d lost precious time. If they did go back to camp, he’d have to report Fritz, then find another driver or try driving himself. Again, he pictured Helen standing in the station, wondering where he was.
Then he saw a signpost, a wooden arrow pointing in the direction they were heading: Marseille. They weren’t headed back to base. Fritz was taking him to Marseille!
Neither of them spoke until hours later when they reached the Marseille train depot, with forty minutes to spare. Probably more, since French trains were notoriously late.
Frank didn’t know whether to arrest Fritz or thank him. He got out and started to grab his pack.
“You can leave it. I will drive you both to your farm.”
“No. We can find a taxi.” No way he’d trust this German with his Helen, or with his Resistance family. As soon as he had his wife safely in his arms, Frank planned to get to a phone and call Bradford to tell him about their little foray into Germany. “You should go back to camp.”
“I will. But first, I wait for your wife,” Fritz said. “You waited for mine.”
MARSEILLE, FRANCE
Helen reread Frank’s coded letter for the umpteenth time as she sat in her train compartment, wedged between two men who smelled like oil and cigar smoke. She smiled at the line asking her if she ever regretted being an only child.
The train jerked to a stop at the third Marseille station. She and Frank had learned their lesson about multiple stations. This time, Frank had repeated the number three fourteen times in one letter. She stood, and her heart raced from a mixture of excitement, nerves, and maybe fear. Would she and Frank feel like strangers after all this time apart? Or what if he canceled on her like last time but she hadn’t received word from the French farmer?
With Love, Wherever You Are Page 29